A HISTORY OF SUSSEX and pitched their tents along the coast west of the town. For the sake of effect they were spread out in a long Hne, with the result that the North Devon and East Middlesex regiments had to encamp on a newly- ploughed field, though there was excellent turf a little inland/ The number of the Sussex militia was fixed by the 42nd Geo. III. cap. 90, at 803, each of the six rapes having its quota, and Brighton also. Its actual strength (counting, probably, the officers) was 840 strong, and the question of its transport was a serious one, as the tents were cumbersome and no limits were set to the impedimenta of the militia if they chose to pay for wagons ; as in the case of some of our more recent wars, it was then said ' the Baggage waggon of a militia regiment resembles more the Removal of the Household Furniture of a Family than that of the Military Stores of an Army.' ^ Commissariat troubles also arose occasionally, and in April 1795 the Oxford militia stationed at Blatch- ington, resenting an insufficiency of food, mutinied, seized all the bread, flour and meat they could find at Seaford and in Bishopstone tide-mill, and then occupied Newhaven, where they were disarmed by the Lancashire Fencibles from Brighton and the Horse Artillery from Lewes. For this mutiny two men were shot at Goldstone Bottom near Brighton.^ Besides the great camp at Brighton, which in the autumn of 1794 contained about 15,000 men, there were troops stationed at Chichester, Arundel, Worthing, Seaford, Alfriston, Lewes, East Grinstead, East- bourne, Hailsham, Pevensey, Bexhill (occupied for some time by Hanoverian soldiers). Battle, Hastings and elsewhere. While the danger of invasion was greatest, in 1803—4, and a descent was expected upon the flat coast of Pevensey Bay, a large camp was formed at East- bourne under General Sir James Pulteney, entrenchments were thrown up along the coast for the emplacement of ninety-four 24-pounders, and the famous Martello towers, still to be seen, were erected on the coast from the Kentish border westward to Seaford. The Pevensey sluices were arranged so that the levels could be inundated, and the ' military canal ' cut to cover the marshes east of Hastings. Extra temporary barracks were erected for 200 cavalry and 900 infantry at Hastings, and for the same number at Eastbourne. At last in October 1804 the Eastbourne camp broke up after a grand sham fight in which four regiments of foot, two squadrons of dragoons and the Sussex, Dorset, North Hants, Glamorgan and South Herts militia took part.* The Sussex militia marched from Beachy Head to Colchester, and thence to South Shields, where in October 1806 the senior captain, John Garthwaite,^ was court-martialled and dismissed for disrespectful behaviour to Colonel Newbury, who had succeeded Lord Chichester in the command. Of the auxiliary forces raised during this period the first tc be ' Parry, Coast of Sussex, p. 67. = Pclham MSS. » Horsfield, Hist, of Lewes, i. 221. « Parry, Coast of Sussex, pp. 202-5. » He published an account of the court-martial and a defence of his own character. 534
